Western & Southern Financial Group’s in-house print shop has moved from the company’s headquarters in Cincinnati to a building in Newport, Kentucky. The print shop had outgrown its old 23,000-square-foot location, and after a years-long search, it settled this summer into a 33,000-square-foot building vacated by a commercial printer just over a mile away.
Western & Southern started moving the print shop’s inventory in early June, marking phase one of the relocation. In the next phase, the company used a flatbed truck to haul 18 tons of its heaviest print shop equipment – the weight of 12 cars – to the new facility.
Western & Southern used the opportunity to upgrade its equipment, enabling the print shop to be more productive, reduce inventory and produce higher-quality materials. The new equipment includes a new Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1 and several other new printers.
In the final phase of the move, the print shop’s office area and associate workstations were relocated. All 32 print shop associates began working full-time in Newport on June 24 – a week earlier than planned.
With associates, equipment and materials operating in two locations and equipment torn down or in transit, the relocation posed significant logistical challenges. Even so, no work was outsourced and there were no injuries to associates or outside personnel.
The print shop move was recently featured in In-plant Impressions magazine. The editor wrote that our print shop “has seen more changes in the past couple of months than most in-plants will experience in a lifetime…This major investment in the in-plant’s future is a testament to the tremendous respect the operation has earned from Western & Southern.”
In-Plant Impressions also ranked Western & Southern’s printing operation third in the nation in sales per employee, a measurement of efficiency and productivity.
The print shop won Print Excellence Awards from Graphic Media Alliance two years in a row: a best-of-show award in 2018 for digital printing on-demand and a best-in-category award in 2019 for specialty finishing.
